Friday, September 25, 2009

Blink and oh, Hari Raya is upon us already! Oops, it just passed. BUT hey, one can smell the celebration in the air still. Yup, the lemang stalls are still around. Afterall it is still the Syawal month.

When in Xi'an, we frequented this area once during the day, twice on nights.

Browsing through tourist maps and websites, this will be pointed out as one of the top attraction spots in the walled city - The Great Mosque.

Though the unique Chinese building styled mosque (with no dome nor tower) is still very much a popular prayer house among the locals, tourists need to pay entry fee ranging from RMB15-25 per person depending on season.The heaving day and night street market surrounding The Great Mosque offers almost everything, eats, homemade attire, trinkets to spices.

But what do you think was our main draw here, which kept us going back 2 nights in a row? They have plenty of roadside stalls hawking fruits, cakes, cooked dishes but only this made us drooled. Succulent Grilled Skewered Lamb (Gau-Yang-Rou in Mandarin).No doubt, the Muslim men doing the manual work looked good too. Trust me. These are must haves. No strong 'beasty' smell. Spicy. On both occasions we savour them in our hotel room. *snap fingers* Now now, we are talking about the the grilled meat.

One of the shops doing brisk business was this.Maybe it's the never ending flow of customers, maybe it was the shorthanded staff or maybe (most probably) it was just the level of tolerance the locals have. We found the din and pile of leftovers on the tables and floor overwhelming so we ordered takeaways.

On normal days and nights, the area was already so busy.Can you imagine the marvellous chaos it's in now during this festive season?

*Clink* Sirap Bandung to a SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL FITRI!

Pity smooth traffic week has ended ..

For those map-illiterate as moi, when visitng at night, just look out for this beacon - the Drum Tower (Gu Lou) of Xi'an. One of the entrance into the Muslim Street is just behind it.

PS. Something memorable happened during the just long weekend ie the Raya holidays. I met up with 8 wholesome to goodness kindie/primary school friends whom I've not been in contact with for 2 decades and counting!

8 of us were in Xian some years ago where we tried a few night stalls with plenty Chinese beer. The ambience is exotic with the great historical aura but our top streetfood choice of all time is still Bangkok/Hadyai which is ranked no 1 followed by Saigon no 2